LGBTQ Center to show groundbreaking 1919 film

KINGSTON — The groundbreaking German silent film "Different From the Others" will screen at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center's 300 Wall St. headquarters at 3 p.m. Sunday. The movie will be accompanied live by pianist and composer Gregory Trinkaus, who has composed an original score for the film.

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Posted Mar. 2, 2013 at 2:00 AM

Posted Mar. 2, 2013 at 2:00 AM

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KINGSTON — The groundbreaking German silent film "Different From the Others" will screen at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center's 300 Wall St. headquarters at 3 p.m. Sunday. The movie will be accompanied live by pianist and composer Gregory Trinkaus, who has composed an original score for the film.

Starring Conrad Veidt ("Casablanca"), the 1919 release is thought to be the earliest surviving feature film to positively highlight gay characters and themes.

"This film represents a major milestone for the LGBTQ community," said Vanessa Shelmandine, the center's project director.

"Different From the Others" tells the story of a gay pianist who falls in love with a male student, only to be forced to choose between blackmail and exposure.

The film was a box office success but was heavily censored because of its sympathetic portrayal of a gay protagonist, its recognition of homosexuality as normal human behavior, and its open criticism of discriminatory laws — in particular, Paragraph 175, the infamous subsection of German penal code that criminalized homosexuality from 1871 until 1994.

Germany's reinstatement of strict censorship laws and the subsequent rise of Nazism saw the destruction of every known extant reel of the film. But against all odds, about 45 minutes of the feature survived the Weimar censors, the Third Reich and the Holocaust.

Restored and pieced together with English intertitles, Trinkaus said, these excerpts are "more than enough to tell a powerful story about love and injustice".